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2004 WHYY.
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FRESH AIR
SHOW: Fresh Air 12:00 AM EST NPR
HEADLINE: Richard Viguerie discusses his
efforts to move
ANCHORS: TERRY GROSS
TERRY GROSS, host:
This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry
Gross. My guest Richard Viguerie has been called `the funding father of the conservative
movement.' After the conservative Republican candidate for president, Barry
Goldwater, lost his presidential bid in 1964, Viguerie
pioneered a new form of political fund-raising through direct mail. This proved
particularly effective in building the conservative movement that elected
Ronald Reagan. Viguerie helped create the Moral Majority and has raised money for many conservative
politicians and organizations. His ambition has been to move the
Republican Party and the country further to the right. In this past election, Viguerie's company sent out an estimated 100 million pieces
of direct mail. He accuses the media, with the exception of talk radio, of
having a liberal bias. Now he has a new book, co-written with David Franke, called "
You point out in the book that there are several things that you think were
very effective about direct mail, above and beyond
actually getting money. You were able to reach people with your message who didn't read conservative journals. You saw it as a way to
bypass the liberal--the media that you considered to be
liberal and not interested in your message. And
you saw it as a way to bypass the Republican hierarchy. Why did you feel you
need to do that? What was the difference between the message you wanted to put
across and the message that you thought, you know, the Republican hierarchy, as
you've described it, wanted to put across?
Mr. RICHARD VIGUERIE (Co-author, "America's Right Turn:
How Conservatives Used New and Alternative Media to Take Power"): Well,
back in the 1950s, the 1960s and well into the 1970s, and actually probably
through until 1994, the Republican leaders in the House of Representatives and
in the Senate were not conservatives, and they weren't conservatives in the
White House until Ronald Reagan was elected. Eisenhower was the
Republican big government establishment candidate. Nixon was a big government
Republican.
So conservatives had to decide on--if they were gonna
be politically effective, they had to operate, of course, within one of the two
major parties, and we selected the Republicans as being closer to our point of
view. But we were a small, distinct minority in terms
of the leadership, and so we had to challenge the Republican leadership back in
the '60s and the '70s, and we used direct mail to communicate to the voters. In
the '60s and the '70s, we felt, again, that we were blocked
from the microphones of the country. Walter Cronkite would go to his CBS office
in the morning, put down his coffee cup, pick up his New York Times, and an
hour later, he and he alone had decided what was the news and information that would be told to the American people that day that was
important. So there were literally a handful of gatekeepers, the three
networks--NBC, ABC, CBS--The New York Times, Associated Press, Time magazine,
etc. Just a handful of people who basically had a very
similar world view, who belonged to the same clubs, socialized together, and
that did not include people with a conservative point of view.
So it was only by using direct mail that we could begin to communicate with the
American people that there was a different world view than they were hearing
from, not only the people in the media, but in the leadership of the two
political parties, the Republicans and Democrats.
GROSS: What was the difference between the--as you put it--you know, the
Republican leaders who weren't conservative and your
conservative agenda? What was the difference?
Mr. VIGUERIE: Well, the Republicans--and there's still
those Republicans in different positions of leadership today that--you know,
we've come a long ways, but we've still got a long ways to go. The Republican
leaders in the '50s and '60s and, as I said, even to this day, many of them
have a big government, corporate approach to governing. And
we as conservatives believe in keeping government as small as possible and as
close to the individuals as possible. We like government to be
operated as much as possible at the local level. And
many Republican leaders are very comfortable with a big government approach. One of the battles that we had to fight back in the '60s and the
'70s and the '80s was big business because big business was very
comfortable--many of them--with dealing with the Soviet Union, and they were doing
what they could to prop up the Soviet Union, do business with them, and our
goal was to bring down the Soviet Union, not to strengthen them, not to do
business with them. So that was a fault line in the Republican Party in
decades past between the conservatives, who wanted to bring down the
GROSS: In your new book, you said basically
that it's easier to raise money if people are angry about something. You write,
`People vote against long before they vote for. People aren't
interested in sending money for good government. That's
something they expect. They will give money quicker to defeat someone who is
opposed to their beliefs.' And I'm wondering how that
understanding affected the issues that you use to raise money around in your
direct mail campaign?
Mr. VIGUERIE: Well, Terry, that was true when I started in direct mail
back in the '60s, and it's true to this day, and it's
not something that's unique to conservatives or Republicans, but the Democrats
certainly understand that. But it's just a fact of
life that people are motivated by anger and fear much more so than positive
emotions, and that's not all bad. You know, sometimes, it's
very good to have anger. Abraham Lincoln was very angry about slavery and
Martin Luther King was very angry about how minorities and African-Americans were treated back in the `50s and the '60s. And even to this day, there's a lot to be angry about and a
lot of injustices out there. And so when you speak to
those injustices, you get people's attention more stronger than you would if
you speak in a more positive way.
GROSS: Well, the issues early on that you organized around--or at least
these are some of the issues that I think you would agree made people angry who you were writing to were the end of prayer in the
schools, the legalization of abortion and homosexuality. You organized a lot
around homosexuality. Did you choose those issues because you knew that for a
certain part of
Mr. VIGUERIE: No. You chose those issues because that's what is your passion, that's what causes you to get
up in the morning. And I've spent all my adult life
trying to solve problems. My generation of conservatives, Terry, almost
entirely--in fact, the generation that came after me and the generation
before--before we were anything, before we were concerned about the social
issues or the role of government in our life, we were anti-Communist. We were
concerned about the evils of communism, and we saw them as a threat to mankind.
And after the
GROSS: My guest is Richard Viguerie. He
pioneered the use of direct mail for political fund-raising. His new book is called "
(Soundbite of music)
GROSS: My guest is Richard Viguerie. He
pioneered the use of direct mail for political fund-raising. He
helped create the Moral Majority and has been a key figure in grassroots
fund-raising for conservative causes. His new book is
called "
You know, we were talking before about your comment that people are more likely
to send money when direct mail is about something that is
opposed to their beliefs. In other words, if you point out something
that is opposed to somebody's beliefs and then they get upset about this, they're more likely to send money to your cause. So I'm wondering if you found homosexuality a particularly
effective issue to organize around? I mean, I remember some of the direct mail
of the '70s was about how homosexuals were going to be recruiting, you know, in
your neighborhood, and, you know, how to--that there was a real danger to our
youth because of homosexual recruitment. Now, you don't really hear much about
homosexual recruitment anymore, but that seemed to be an effective fund-raising
issue in the '70s, and I'm wondering what--like, if that was effective because
it scared people?
Mr. VIGUERIE: Terry, quite frankly, that wasn't
the case then and now. I can speak with firsthand knowledge that in the past
year or so that we've been dealing with the gay
marriage issue, it has not been something that, quite frankly, has worked in
the mail. It is something that people feel very strongly about, and they've expressed that opinion at the ballot box. But from a marketing standpoint, there hasn't been much in
the way of a successful mail program by any organization that I'm aware of.
Americans are enormously tolerant. And the homosexual
agenda--everything that I read in the liberal press--acknowledges that the
homosexuals have made enormous progress that nobody could have predicted just
years ago much less decades ago, how much progress that they have made. But what has happened recently is that the homosexuals, the
activists, have really gotten much of
GROSS: So let me see if I understand correctly. What you're
saying is that Americans who oppose homosexual rights are very tolerant people.
It's the homosexuals who are intolerant, mean-spirited and want to destroy marriage as we know it.
Mr. VIGUERIE: Well, Terry, I think you said the homosexual rights. I don't know if you think they have a right to marriage. I
disagree that they have a right to marriage. Americans are enormously tolerant.
We just don't feel that the homosexuals should be out
there trying to reorder society. We have lived a certain way for thousands of
years, and we don't feel that we're bigoted and mean-spirited
because we want to continue practicing our religion, our faith. They're saying if we believe the Bible, if we believe what
our religious leaders have taught us for thousands of years, that we're bigoted
and prejudiced, and we must be taken out of the political process, and let's
not have a role in politics. Well, we just reject that mean-spirited approach.
GROSS: So, again, you're saying it's the homosexuals
who are mean-spirited and that people who oppose homosexuals either
having certain jobs or marrying or having civil unions, they're tolerant. It's the homosexuals that are mean-spirited.
Mr. VIGUERIE: Well, there has been a great deal of mean-spirited homosexual
activity in the recent years. They go into our churches, desecrate--I'm a Catholic--and they desecrate the Holy Eucharist, and
they disrupt our services.
GROSS: I'm sorry, how do they do that? How do
they desecrate the Holy Eucharist?
Mr. VIGUERIE: They go into St. Patrick's Cathedral in
GROSS: I'm sorry. I'm
not familiar with the fact that that was part of the homosexual movement.
Mr. VIGUERIE: Well it's part of the homosexual
activists--leaders act up and others have desecrated the Holy Eucharist.
GROSS: You're talking about maybe one political
protest that happened, but it makes it...
Mr. VIGUERIE: Well, it's...
GROSS ...sounds as if it's all gays go into
churches and desecrate communion because they're gay.
Mr. VIGUERIE: No. All gays don't
go in there, but there is in the leadership, too many times, a mean-spirited
approach. And it's interesting, the liberals for each
cause that comes along, they just have a hard time understanding that all of
GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guest is
Richard Viguerie, and he's considered the king of
political direct mail campaigns. He was very important in the formation of the
Moral Majority and in the first election of President Reagan. And he has a new book co-written with David Franke called "
Correct me if I'm wrong, you were in on the creation
of the Moral Majority, and you--is that incorrect?
Mr. VIGUERIE: I missed that meeting, Terry.
GROSS: You missed the meeting.
Mr. VIGUERIE: I missed that meeting, literally. Some of my friends, Ed McAteer, who just passed away in the last month or two, and
Paul Weyrich and Howard Phillips went down and met
with Jerry Falwell in the late '70s. And basically, when they left the meeting, they had formed
the Moral Majority there. And it's interesting and
exciting for me to hear that Dr. Falwell is
reconstituting the Moral Majority.
But I was very involved with the whole formation
involvement of the religious right back in the late '70s and early '80s, and it
probably did as much to bring conservatives to power starting in the '80s as
anything that I can think of. Before the religious conservatives began to get
involved in politics, Republicans would win 43, 45, 47, 48 percent of the vote,
but not very often did we get 51, 53 percent. But in
the late '70s, when we began to reach out to the conservative Protestants,
conservative Catholics and involve them in the political process, starting in
1980, then we began to elect people and get 52, 53 percent or more. It's kind of like a three-legged stool. We had two legs of
the stool through the '50s, '60s and '70s, but the stool wasn't
very supportive. One leg of the stool was foreign policy, opposition to
communism. Second stool was economic, lower taxes, less government. And only when we added the third leg of that stool did we
really start winning elections, and that was bringing the religious community
into the local process.
GROSS: And what did that add? What was that leg exactly?
Mr. VIGUERIE: Well, it brought into the political process first off people who
were afraid in the late '70s that Jimmy Carter had an agenda to destroy the
Christian schools. The Christian school movement--Protestant school movement
was really starting to explode in growth, and they were starting three, four or
more a day new schools. And Jimmy Carter's
commissioner of IRS in the late '70s issued a ruling that if you had started a
private school after 1953, which was Brown vs. Board of Education, that you
were presumed to have started the school for racial purposes to avoid
segregation--to continue segregation and avoid integration; therefore, you
would lose your tax deductible status. Well, that was an
outrage to people who wanted to practice their religious faith, and so
they saw it as a threat by government. And so that's when people like Reverend
Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell and others began to
pay attention to the political process, and that frightened them, and they
prevailed, and Jimmy Carter's IRS commissioner had to withdraw that ruling. But then they began to look and say, `Well, we've got a
problem with abortion. We've got a problem with schools driving God out of the
schools and out of the public square.' And so it was a
wake-up call for Christians back in the late '70s.
GROSS: Richard Viguerie's new book is "
(Announcements)
(Soundbite of music)
GROSS: Coming up, Richard Viguerie talks more
about his efforts to move
(Soundbite of music)
GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross back with Richard Viguerie,
the pioneer of direct mail for political fund-raising. He was one of the key
figures in the growth of the new right. He helped create the
Moral Majority and has raised money for many conservative politicians and
organizations. Now he's co-authored a new book
called "
When the Moral Majority started, the founders of the group and the activists
within the group, yourself included, had a vision of what this might mean for
the present and for the future. So it's around--nearly
25 years later. How much of your vision that began with the Moral Majority has
been accomplished, and what's left to be done?
Mr. VIGUERIE: Terry, it's a mixed bag. We've had successes, and we've had failures. It's easy for us, quite frankly, to focus on our failures,
but I tell my friends, `If you think that things are going poorly for us, I
don't know a liberal out there that wouldn't trade places with us 'cause they
feel that we're winning everything, and we don't see it that way.' A major
conservative leader, a fellow named Morton Blackwell, who has trained over
40,000 young conservatives to be effective and active in politics and public
policy, said years ago that conservatives had three major challenges. Our first
challenge was to nominate somebody for president, and we did that in 1964,
Barry Goldwater. And then our next challenge was to
nominate and elect a conservative to the White House, and we did that in 1980
with Ronald Reagan. And now our third challenge is to
nominate, elect and govern from the White House, and we've not been able to do
that so far. We've not had a conservative who has
governed from the White House. Hopefully, that will be
the present president, George Bush. That remains to be seen.
In a policy area, Terry, we've had success,
obviously, in foreign policy, in the defeat of the
And we're also losing the cultural war. I think that
we have suffered a lot of setbacks. If you look at
where the culture is now vs. where it was 30, 40 years ago, we're
clearly losing that battle. The secular community is stronger than ever, and
the religious effect has less effect on the culture than they did 10 years ago,
20, 30 years ago.
GROSS: You know, conservative are now--well, let's
say Republicans 'cause maybe you would and maybe you wouldn't agree that they
meet your criteria for a conservative. But the
Republicans control the White House, the House, the Senate. And
talk radio is very conservative, as you write about in your book. Parts of
cable talk are very conservative. And so--yet you
sound, really, like things are getting worse for you in some ways.
(Soundbite of laughter)
GROSS: And I'm wondering like--it sounds like
you still feel like you're part of this embattled minority group when, in fact,
the religious right has gotten, like, so many victories in the past few years.
Mr. VIGUERIE: Well, Terry, we've had some
successes at the ballot box, but those haven't always been turned into policy
victories. For example, we have more abortions being
performed now than we did 15, 20 years ago. We elected Ronald Reagan
president in 1980, but we didn't take control of the
courts or the Supreme Court. We have a majority of Republicans in the House and
the Senate, but that's not a majority of
conservatives. We know that government growth is out of control. Spending is,
you know, just an embarrassment to everybody. It should be an embarrassment to
the Republican leaders. I hope it is. But, anyway,
we're winning some political victories, but we have not been able to turn that
into policy victories.
GROSS: I want to talk with you more about media. Your new book, "
Mr. VIGUERIE: In 1987, Ronald Reagan and his Federal Communications Commission
abolished the fairness doctrine. The fairness doctrine had been set up in 1949
to try to ensure that all views were carried on the media, and it didn't have that effect, quite frankly. It kept media--views
from being aired because if you wanted to have a
program that carried a liberal message or a conservative message, you would
have to give equal time to someone with a different point of view. And no radio station could go out there and give away half
of their time and stay in business. So the fairness
doctrine was really misnamed. And when it was
abolished in 1987, it allowed people with different viewpoints, whether you're
conservative, moderate, liberal, to go on the radio and communicate those views
to the American people. And Rush Limbaugh started
literally the next year, in 1988.
And it's been a godsend, I think, for conservatives because, for whatever
reason--and I've got some thoughts on that--liberals have not had much success
on talk radio, and conservatives have had a great deal of success. And without talk radio, we probably wouldn't have had a
Republican Congress elected in 1994.
GROSS: So what are some of the reasons you think conservatives have been
more successful at it?
Mr. VIGUERIE: Well, first of all, talk radio is an
emotional medium. It's something that people evaluate
very quickly, and you come to a conclusion about how you feel on something very
quickly. It's a populist medium. And
most of these gut populist issues are conservative issues, not entirely but
mostly. It's hard to say why we need higher taxes in a
few seconds on the radio and convince people. People think that we should have
traditional moral values and we should have a strong national defense and we
should have a tough law-and-order policy and program in
And, also, liberals deal with a lot of nuances. They
say, `Well, on the one hand, there's this. Then we must consider this.' And nuances don't work on the radio. Radio works for people
who take strong positions and can do it in a few words or soundbites,
if you would.
GROSS: Now you're obviously glad that
conservatives dominate talk radio, and you think that that's happened, in part,
as a result of the end of the FCC fairness doctrine. You criticized the media
for being liberal, and yet you're glad that the
fairness doctrine doesn't exist because now conservative radio isn't obliged to
give other points of view. So is what you want conservative media?
Mr. VIGUERIE: No.
GROSS: In other words, would that be the goal?
Mr. VIGUERIE: No. We want the marketplace to work. And back in the '50s and the '60s when I was getting
involved in politics, the marketplace didn't work. You had a handful of
gatekeepers, literally, people like Walter Cronkite, who controlled all the
news and information that went out to people's homes. And
when you abolish the fairness doctrine and then with technology, the average
person literally has hundreds, if not thousands, of news sources available to
them. Now with hundreds of TV channels with public policy news on them, the
direct mail, the Internet, with thousands of bloggers
out there, talk radio, people can search and find whatever news and information that they want out there. And
it's the marketplace.
People didn't say, `Hey, there's this really smart,
clever conservative named Rush Limbaugh. Let's put him on the air.' They put
Rush Limbaugh on the air because he could sell advertising. And
Sean Hannity, Ollie North, others--they could sell
advertising. And the--talk radio is available to
liberals. They're just not able to convince the
American people to listen to them, and, therefore, they can't sell advertising.
Liberals have a problem with the American people. They don't
have a problem with conservative media. It's just the
public doesn't like their views on the issues.
GROSS: My guest is Richard Viguerie. He
pioneered the use of direct mail for political fund-raising. His new book is called "
(Soundbite of music)
GROSS: My guest is Richard Viguerie. He
pioneered the use of direct mail for political fund-raising. He
helped create the Moral Majority and has been a key figure in grassroots
fund-raising for conservative causes. His new book is
called "
You argue in the book that a lot of, you know, the mainstream media is actually
biased; it's actually liberal. And
you include in that the broadcast television networks, public radio, some
newspapers. Make the case for us.
Mr. VIGUERIE: Where do I start, Terry? Every poll that
I've ever seen for the last 25, 30 years, I guess, that polls people in the
national media about their views on issues--who they voted for in recent
elections; how do they identify, as conservative liberal, Republican, Democrat--something
in the area of 90 percent identify themselves as Democrat, liberal, voting for
liberal candidates, taking a liberal position on issues. So that is well-established out there.
The Pulitzer Prize author David Halberstam wrote a
wonderful book called "The Powers That Be" talking about how a
handful of media properties dominate American politics. And
he said that the bias in the media comes primarily not in lying or distorting
things but in the selection of the news story. So over
the years when the Walter Cronkites and the Dan Rathers and Tom Brokaws would
talk about problems in the government, they would see problems in the military:
the waste, fraud and abuse in the military. They almost never saw waste, fraud
and abuse in social problems, in liberal programs. So
it was very subtle, but it was very definitely there; that they would address
these issues from a liberal perspective and not a conservative perspective.
And once the public had an outlet, once the fairness doctrine was abolished and
we had thousands of conservative talk radio programs and then many
conservatives on cable television and the Internet, people went to the
conservative position because they felt they had been denied that point of view
for decades prior to that.
GROSS: You said earlier in our interview that a lot of
Christians feel like there is a war against them in the country. And then you also said in the interview that you feel there is a war
in this country. And I'm wondering if you feel like, as part of the conservative
movement, that you are waging a war, waging--or whether you--if you see
yourself as waging the war or being the victim of war 'cause you also said that
there's a culture war. So, like, who's initiating the
war, in your eyes? Like, who's...
Mr. VIGUERIE: Well, we didn't start the war.
GROSS: You didn't start the war.
Mr. VIGUERIE: The other side started the war, and we either choose to
participate or lose the war; same with the
And the secular community here in
GROSS: Now you make it sound like evangelical Christians are the victims
of a war and they're under attack, but, I mean,
you've--evangelical Christians have been doing quite well politically right
now. And a lot of people feel that it's the other way;
that evangelical Christians want their point of view to be the only point of
view that prevails politically or, you know, in the courts and Congress. And I'm wondering if you're aware of the fact that there are a lot
of religious leaders in the Catholic Church and Protestant denominations in
Judaism who are very religious, are very schooled in their religion and have different
points of view on many cultural and religious issues; that there isn't one
religion and there isn't one way even within religions of thinking of things;
that there's diversity, and this is a diverse country with many different
points of view and many different interpretations of Scripture.
Mr. VIGUERIE: Absolutely, Terry. But
that doesn't mean because you make that point or make that case that,
therefore, people who have a different view than the national media, different
view than
GROSS: I'm just talking about the country.
Mr. VIGUERIE: Yeah.
GROSS: I'm talking about priests and rabbis and
nuns.
Mr. VIGUERIE: I understand.
GROSS: I'm not talking about the media.
Mr. VIGUERIE: I'm just saying that it doesn't mean
that we should withdraw from the war that's been declared on our moral values. It's interesting that the people in the media, the
establishment, did not have a problem back in the '60s and the '70s when
liberal religious leaders were very involved politically, particularly in
opposing much of the opposition to the Communists in
Yes, the conservative religious community has had some political victories
lately, but that has not translated into culture victories. I think most people
would acknowledge that the views of
GROSS: You've made the comparison between the
war against communism and the culture wars now. Do you see the people who you
describe as liberals as being as grave a threat as you
saw the Communists as being?
Mr. VIGUERIE: In some ways. As the Bible says, `What
profited a man if you gain the whole world and lose your soul?' So that if our country loses its souls, if individuals lose
their religious values, that is very threatening. Yeah, `Man does not live by
bread alone.' And, yes, it is very, very important
that we reclaim the culture, that we reclaim our traditional Judeo-Christian
values.
GROSS: You've explained on the show that--talking about gut issues have
helped conservatives catch on in the radio because liberals are too nuanced and
that, you know, gut issues and that getting people--about things that upset
them are very effective in fund-raising campaigns. And so
I'm wondering if the language of war that you've used to describe, you know,
the culture wars and the attack that Christians are under--I wonder if that, in
part, comes from your knowledge of fund-raising and that language like that
sells?
Mr. VIGUERIE: Well, I and everybody that I am involved with in trying to
reclaim the culture and move America back in a small government, traditional
moral values direction doesn't think of it from a marketing standpoint. We
think of it as to how we can get up in the morning and
improve our country and our world and bring it back in the direction
that we would like to see it. We have come late to recognize that people have
declared war against us out of
GROSS: Richard Viguerie,
thank you very much for talking with us.
Mr. VIGUERIE: My pleasure.
GROSS: Richard Viguerie's new book is called
"